Efficient algorithms for delay-bounded minimum cost path problem in communication networks

As the amount of data transmitted over a network increases and high bandwidth applications requiring point to multipoint communications like videoconferencing, distributed database management or cooperative work become widespread, it becomes very important to optimize network resources. One such optimization is multicast tree generation. The problem of generating a minimum cost multicast tree given the network topology and costs associated with the connecting links can be modelled as a Steiner tree problem which is NP-complete. Much work has been done in the direction of obtaining near-optimal multicast trees when the objective is only to minimize the cost. However, many real time applications such as videoconferencing require that data be sent within prespecified delay limits in order to avoid problems such as anachronism and lack of synchronization. We deal with the delay-bounded cost-optimal multicast tree (DBCPAT) generation problem. Specifically, we discuss a closely related problem which is to find a delay-bounded cost-optimal path (DBCP) between a specified source and destination node. Such a path can be used as a starting point to solve the DBCMT. We present an exact solution to the DBCP which is based on the branch-and-bound paradigm. We also propose a heuristic technique to solve the DBCP using the principle of evolutionary computing. The results obtained using the two techniques are compared for several large networks.